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Veterinary Technician-is it considered patient contact experience by CASPA?


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Hello, I'm in the process of completing the CASPA application and am really unsure about where to put my experience as a veterinary technician: under patient contact experience, other health care experience, or other work experience? What I do definitely involves patient care and much more, but since I'm not sure if the human health care community considers veterinary care as "health care" I don't really know where to put this? The work experience field isn't require, but I don't feel like I should leave it blank. For those of you who don't know, as a licensed vet tech I pretty much do what a human nurse would do, only with animals, and am also responsible for administering anesthesia, radiology, histology, cytology, catheter placement, blood draw, etc. I do believe my skills and experience will benefit as I transition into the human medical field, just not sure how the PA program will view this experience?

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I know for a fact that many schools will not accept this. And I don't blame them. While the biology isn't much different, the fact is that working with humans involves a very different psychology that you need to deal with.

 

Also, why not just go to veterinary school? I seriously considered doing that at one point, and there is nothing wrong with that profession.

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I would just research it. Two of the schools I interviewed at liked the fact that it brought a different prespective to their class. It is considered health care experience, but like everyone mentioned just make sure that the schools accept it. I had a similar post last year around this time. Also, it is nice to have human patient experience. I do see that you just did not know what to place your veterinary experience under so I am assuming you have other experience as well. It honestly depends on what your personal statement says about you and how you answer your interview questions.

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I only worked as a kennel tech and not a fully certified vet tech for a few years, and I personally didn't bother listing those hours on my CASPA. What I did do was take a little time in my personal statement to explain:

 

a. Why I made the switch to human medicine (PREPARE for this question, it WILL come up often!)

b. How my veterinary experience remotely prepared me for the career change and to be a successful PA. In particular, I discussed how I gained compassion and problem-solving skills with a "patient" population that cannot express what's wrong with them. This can carry over into both pediatrics and geriatric (think dementia, Alzheimer's) medicine. Reading body language, being exceedingly patient when your actions are not always seen as being "helpful" to the patient, etc.

 

From what I hear, the PS is now longer this year, so I'd say you have no excuse NOT to address it in yours. ;)

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I also listed my 5 years of vet experience in HCE. I wanted to apply to 3 schools, but only 2 would accept my vet experience as HCE. I checked with them ahead of time so I wouldn't waste my time applying. As others have said, prepared with the "why aren't you going to vet school?" question. I would also stress on all of the different aspects of medicine you get hands on experience in while being a vet tech. In veterinary medicine I was able to gain experience in a variety of roles that are pretty much the same as in human medicine: scrub tech, sterile processor, pharm tech, first assist, rad tech, lab tech, phlebo, even anesthesiology. Some people don't realize how much the medicine is all the same.

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As far as the CASPA app is concerned, they really don't care where you list it as long as you do include it somewhere. What you need to determine is if the time you spent as a vet tech counts towards any HCE pre-reqs your program may have, and the only ones who can answer that are the programs themselves.

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